The present invention relates to a system and method for synchronizing travel related data across multiple independent system platforms. During the course of booking travel reservations and purchasing airline tickets or other travel related services, passenger data are created and stored on a number of independent data processing systems. For example, if airline tickets are purchased through a global distribution system (GDS) such as Worldspan, a passenger name record (PNR) is created on the GDS. The PNR includes information about the passenger or passengers who will be traveling on the ticket or tickets, the flight itinerary, the fare charged for tickets, and the like. Typically, the PNR created by the GDS is copied to the internal reservations and ticketing systems of the airline on which the tickets are purchased. Thus, the PNR data reside in at least two separate locations.
Travel data are further dispersed if a traveler books reservations or purchase tickets from additional travel service providers. For example, if in addition to purchasing airline tickets the traveler also books a hotel and reserves a rental car, much of the data in the PNR will be repeated on the reservation systems of the hotel and rental car companies. Further, the hotel and rental car reservations may also be booked through a GDS or GDS-like system dedicated to hotels, such as Pegasus, or a GDS or GDS-like system dedicated to rental cars. In this case, additional PNRs will be created for the hotel GDS and the rental car GDS, further increasing the number of independent systems on which the passenger's travel data will be stored. Much of the data stored on these various systems will be the same and often times and dates will likely overlap. Since these systems are generally independent of one another, discrepancy may exist between the data stored on different systems. This may lead to conflicts between the services to be provided by the various travel service providers. Conflicts may also arise when changes are made to the arrangements made with one travel service provider without considering the impact the changes will have on the services provided by the other travel service providers. A traveler's travel data may be updated on the reservations system of one travel service provider, while the reservations and ticketing systems of the other travel service providers remain unaware of the changes.
The advent of the internet and the world wide web has the potential to significantly alter the ways in which travel related services are distributed. Already the number of travel related web sites has proliferated. Most such web sites, however, have simply replicated the traditional travel agency model in the on-line environment. Rather than a customer contacting a travel agent by phone or in person, contact is made over the Internet. However, the remainder of the transaction proceeds along substantially the traditional course. The customer specifies the travel dates and the destination and the on-line travel agent processes the request in the same manner as a traditional travel agent.
More recently, however, new models have been developed for delivering travel related services over the internet. For example, in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/872,948 entitled “System and Method For Receiving and loading Fare and Schedule Data,” assigned to the assignee of the present application, an on-line system for searching airline schedule and fare data and purchasing tickets over the internet is disclosed. According to this system, searches are performed on external databases independent of the GDS. The search results are forwarded directly to the customer's internet web browser, and the GDS is contacted only after the customers decides to purchase tickets. In addition to airline tickets, the system may be expanded to provide reservation and booking services for other travel service providers such as hotels, rental car companies, cruise lines and others. Thus, the system may be configured to provide a single site for booking all of a customer's travel requirements. However, with each additional travel service provider with whom services are booked, the potential for conflicts and discrepancy between the travel data created and stored on the various systems of each individual travel service provider is greatly increased.
Therefore, because of the potential for stale or conflicting data stored on the systems of different travel service providers if an on-line travel service providing reservations booking and ticket purchasing services for multiple travel service providers requires a mechanism for updating and correcting a customer's travel data across a number of different systems platforms operated by the various travel service providers. It is also desirable that an on-line travel system provides a mechanism whereby changes to a customer's travel data, including changes to the customer's itinerary, made by the internal systems of one travel service provider, are communicated to the internal systems other travel service providers with whom the customer has made travel arrangements. It is also desirable that such a system provide a central comprehensive record of all of a customer's travel arrangements. Such a comprehensive travel record may then be used to compare the services to be provided by the various travel service providers in order to identify conflicts. If conflicts are found, steps may be taken to resolve them.